Prototype Italian MBT 1925 Straight-Pull Rifle (Video)

Note: This video was filmed over a year ago, but I have been holding it in anticipation of the rifle going to auction. That doesn’t seem to be happening, so I’m posting the video now.

Only three example of this 1925 prototype rifle from MBT (Metallurgica Brescia gia Tempini) were ever made, and were sent out in hopes of finding military contracts. One went to Norway, and this one went to Russia, where it was acquired by a US Lend-Lease supply pilot.

It is an straight-pull design which is very close to being a self-loading rifle (and in fact additional patents were filed in 1926 to adapt it to self-loading functionality). It uses the standard 6-round Carcano clip, and is chambered for 6.5x52mm Carcano ammunition.

After this was filmed, my friend James took it out shooting again with pre-war brass clips, and said it worked reliably – FWIW.

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Does any country introduced entirely new repeating rifle in 1920s/1930s?
I can’t found any in my memory. In my opinion it was time, when if you want introduce entirely new rifle it should be self-loading.

The French MAS 36 bolt-action in 7.5 x 54 MAS comes to my mind immediately. It was the last “clean sheet of paper” bolt-action design adopted by any major country as the standard army infantry rifle, as opposed to specialist sniping rifles, etc.

Like every French army rifle before it, it was notable for having no manual safety, making it impossible to carry it with a round in the chamber without the risk of an AD. This is somewhat understandable for a design such as the Lebel or Kropatschek in the 1880s, but there’s really no excuse for it on one developed half a century and several wars later.

BTW, its spike-bayonet setup was apparently the “inspiration” for the one on the German FG42. Another example of the fact that multiple examples of a bad idea still do not make it a good one.

Again thanks to you and the network of rare firearms owners that let us see these odd bits of firearms history.

It does seem that the USA was spared a good deal of the teathing issues but going from a Mauser (1903)style to the M1 Garand

In a way the Army ordnance dept that is seen as stodgy and unreceptive to change learned its lesson in the Civil war by the plethora (as shown by Ian) of Carbines and Small issue rifles used during the conflict.

Even the Army’s “wonk tech” semi-auto the Pederson device did not change the basic rifle.

“It does seem that the USA was spared a good deal of the teathing issues but going from a Mauser (1903)style to the M1 Garand”
Garand also encounter various problems when designing his self-loading rifles. When his rifle enter production it was still “gas-trap” design, later when normal gas port was designed early-production rifles were updated to use it.

Very true but removing gas trap and making a port in the bore is a farily easy solution, of course the USA was willing to do that while say the Germans forced a Bang(gas trap) system to be used until it was finally ignored by one of the companies doing the design work.

I’m really confused by that charging handle – it should have been pretty simple to design it so you can open the bolt without pushing the handle in; but can also push the handle in to “lock” it into the bolt, for use as a forward assist.

The AR-15 had the same arrangement with its bolt-retraction handle, originally. Hence the addition of the bolt-closure plunger on the M16A1.

Most users of the AR-15 tend to ignore the bolt closer. If a round doesn’t want to go in, the usual drill is to yank on the bolt retractor, eject the offender, and feed the next one up.

Army Ordnance insisted on the bolt closer in the belief that soldiers liked having something to push on when the rifle was hanging up. I suspect what most of the actual soldiers really wanted was a rifle that was less prone to hanging up.

It looks like the designers may have been working on a semi-automatic rifle, but before completing the design decided to try to market what they had at that point as a straight-pull. There’s really no other reason for a lot of those design features.

If it was a privately-funded venture, perhaps they ran out of money and/or needed additional finances to develop the system into a working semi-auto. A nice government contract (with the promise of an add-on conversion system to semi-auto) would have bought a lot of bar stock and walnut to produce rifles and fund further experimentation on their self-loading design. Who knows?

“The Pederson device was so secret”
Many weapons were designed to be used in Plan 1919:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_1919
but this plan never become real, as war ended in 1918.
Some weapons enter service after war (Mark VIII Liberty tank, Sopwith Salamander) other did not.

It is clear that this rifle was test bed for something else. Italian weapons designers seem to be methodical in guiding the evolution of their weapons.Rarely to new radically different designs just spring into existence.

Or Cei-Rigotti, however I don’t known early years of this design, query in Wikipedia suggest that it was presented in 1895, which don’t exclude that is existed earlier.

“drill a hole in a perfectly good barrel”
I suspect that inspiration for gas-operated might be… steam locomotive. In steam engine pressure of steam is used to torque wheels, then why not use pressure of powder to cycle action of weapon?

According to the book The Rifle and its Development, Regulus Pilon obtained U.S. patent 2998 in 1863 for a system of ejecting the cartridge from and recocking a rifle with barrel recoil. The prototype is illustrated on p.225 of Guns of the World.

Rifle further states that one W. Curtis obtained U.S. patent 1810 in 1866 for a gas-operated rifle, but so far i haven’t been able to locate a copy of the patent to determine exactly how it worked.

Gas operation and other forms of self-loading are older than we might assume.

“Rifle further states that one W. Curtis obtained U.S. patent 1810 in 1866 for a gas-operated rifle, but so far i haven’t been able to locate a copy of the patent to determine exactly how it worked.”
Маркевич – http://commi.narod.ru/txt/markev/463.htm – states that it was English engineer Josef/Joseph(?)Curtis/Curtiss(?) in Russian: Джозеф Картис, that patented gas-operated self-loader, so it you should search not for “U.S. patent 1810 in 1866” but Patent, British, No.1810, Year 1866 (IIRC British patent numbers are unique locally inside one year)

I found in LIST OF ENGLISH PATENT GRANTED BETWEEN THE 28TH AUGUST AND 28TH SEPTEMBER, 1837:
William Joseph Curtis, of Deptford, Kent, engineer, for an improved boiler, or apparatus for generating steam.(…)

I event don’t try to search through British patent, but I hope the information “William Joseph Curtis, of Deptford, Kent” will be useful for you.